A Call to Action at UCSD – March 1st

Editor: The following “Call to Action” is from ReclaimUCSD and involves a campus protest against student fees for March 1st, and although student walk-outs are also being planned for City College and SDSU, this “Call” is detailed in its reasons and history (see footnotes at end).

Students, instructors and staff you have a stake in the future of the UC. The public nature of the UC is under threat, but on March 1st we are coming together to defend it.

Students, mandatory fees set by the regents have more than doubled since 2001 adjusted for inflation.[1] At the same time, UCSD’s average debt at graduation increased 20%.[2] In 2009, 48% of UCSD students graduated with debt at an average of $18,757.[3] Since 1990 expenditure per student has fallen over 19%.[4] At the same time state support per student fell 60% while tuition support more than tripled.[5] The UC shifted from public funding toward personal, private funding. This shift was not and is not inevitable. Students: the ability of many of your qualified colleagues to attend a UC is threatened by this shift,[6] but you can help.

Instructors, between 1995 and 2010, while positions for teaching in the UC system increased 48%, positions in senior management increased 182%.[7] In 2007, a retired UC Berkeley professor estimated the excess growth in senior management to cost the UC $603 million annually.[8] As instructors retire they are not replaced,[9] and some of your colleagues at UCSD were recently recruited to a private institution.[10] The UC is moving from academic to entrepreneur. This movement is not inevitable. Instructors: the priority for the UC to attract, retain and support your colleagues has been misplaced, but you can help.

Staff, starting in 1999 the UC regents began to funnel pension fund money into riskier investments. Since 2004 billions of dollars have been invested through private investment firms which are non-transparent, lightly regulated, highly risky, and which have charged the UC tens of millions of dollars so far.[11] The UC’s pension and investment portfolios lost $23 billion in the 2008 financial crisis, some of which were made against the advice of a former treasurer[12] and in full awareness of the risk.[13] The UC is now asking for workers to pay into the pension system as they cut benefits to absorb its losses.[14] The UC privatized and jeopardized its investments. This was not and is not inevitable Staff: The risks taken by the regents promise to harm you, your families, and your colleagues, but you can help.

Students, instructors, staff and Californians: we have been disenfranchised by a public system in which we all hold a legitimate stake. There are 26 regents. Only four are democratically elected.[15] Only one is a student, chosen by the other regents.[16] Not one is a tenure-track faculty member, even though this is explicitly provided for in the state constitution.[17] Neither non-ladder faculty nor general staff have representatives on the board.

Students, instructors, staff and Californians: we have inherited a prosperous state whose government is fiscally self-destructive. Proposition 13 requires a two-thirds vote to raise taxes, but lets a simple 50 percent majority lower taxes and introduce loopholes.[18] Prop 13 sets a 1% cap on corporate property tax-rate, whose revenues are allocated by the state government rather than local municipal governing bodies.[19] This legislation, among other things,[20] has resulted in almost yearly budget impasses.[21]

Since 2004, this governmental malfunction has been taken out on the UC and CSU systems. That year the governor and both university presidents signed the Compact of Higher Education.[22] That document planned to increase state funding barely above inflation,[23] while asking the UC and CSU to “develop their annual budget plans based on the assumption that student fees will increase by […] 10 percent per year on average over the [following] three-year period [2004 to 2007].”[24] The cost of public higher education was deliberately shifted onto the backs of students, undermining the UCs “fundamental missions [of] teaching, research and public service.”[25]

March 1st is just one day of action in a growing movement, but there are any number of ways to support it.

Students, instructors and staff: when you walk out, teach out, march out, or speak out starting at 11:30 am on March 1st you are demonstrating your commitment to the importance of public education in an egalitarian society; you are demanding your role in shared governance of a public institution; and you are defending future generations who will inherit the political, economic, social and educational systems we create for ourselves.

Update: A video report on one of these actions by Eugene Davidovich

UCSD students reclaimed a second space on campus this time the Chancellors conference room at the La Jolla Campus.

___________

Footnotes:

[1] Increasing by a factor of 2.55, or 154% both adjusted for inflation. Primary: www.ucop.edu/budget/fees/documents/history_fees.pdf

[23] To increase funding 3% to 4% when the authors should have expected inflation as high as 3.19% (average annual inflation in California between 1999 and 2005) www.dof.ca.gov/html/fs_data/latestecondata/documents/BBFYCPI.XLS

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